Enter With Thanksgiving

You know during this time of year. I want to focus on thankfulness on Thanksgiving and having that attitude and I think one of the most beautiful Psalms of Thanksgiving is the 100 song. So if you want to follow along with me on the screen or on your sermon notes, I'll read Psalm 100 for you. Says the song for giving thanks shout for Joy To The Lord all the Earth Worship the Lord with gladness come before him with joyful songs know that the Lord is God. Is he who made us and we are his we are his people the Sheep of his pasture enter his gates with Thanksgiving and his courts with praise give thanks to him and praise His name for the Lord is good and his love endures forever his faithfulness continues through all generations.

You know the 100 song was written for the people of Israel and God use this song and many others like it to say to the people of Israel. You know, when you come into the promised land when you settle down in your nice warm houses, and you have plenty of food to eat. Don't forget me. Because the people of Israel needed a reminder to be thankful to not be grumbling about some of the things going on around them and to have that attitude of gratitude.

And as I thought about a lot of the events going on in our world and in our nation this week, I thought you know, we need that reminder to not think that's why it's important that we look at this and look at some of what is in scripture about it. So maybe God had our nation in mine too when this song was written. Maybe this pandemic and all the events related to it is to help us remember what is truly essential in our lives and how much we have to be thankful for?

Because so often and especially I think in our nation there's a real danger during this season when we start thinking about Thanksgiving that we base our thankfulness off of how much we have. You know do I have enough turkey to completely Gorge myself on it and send myself into a food coma while watching football on Thanksgiving afternoon. You know is my money in the bank secure is my job secure. Am I healthy? You don't we let those things determine whether were thankful or not.

Did the candidate that I voted for this last week get elected or not? We can allow those things to determine the state of our thankfulness and the psalmist reminds us that all these things may change at any time. All of those things are temporary they can drift away. They can burn up. Someone can steal them they can rot they can rust. You know that is not why we can not let our happiness be based off of those things. You know, our security can't be wrapped up in our possessions or in our physical well-being it. The only thing that we know for sure. Is our relationship with the Lord? In the psalmist is reminding us of that. That's what the 100th Psalm is all about. Cuz if you look at that saw me know in first one, you see the name of the Lord in verse to you see the name of the Lord and verse 3 you find the name of the Lord and verse for it says enter his gates with Thanksgiving.

And again in verse 5 you find the name of the Lord. So it's clear that the psalmist is reminding us that the basis of our Thanksgiving is the Lord and we need to remember that. Unless we break this song down and look at it a little closer. I think we'll find for Thanksgiving commands and one faithful promise in the midst of this passage. Man, number one that we find there is shout for Joy To The Lord all the Earth.

You don't means to shout with the force of a trumpet blast. If you look at what some of the original language was, you know, I shout for joy that comes from the depths of your being. You know, it's when you try to project your voice and you know, use your diaphragm and get it into it not just your head voice but really put an effort into it. That's the type of shout that it's talking about, you know a shelf that comes from the very depths of your being. And the reason that you shout for Joy like that to the Lord is because maybe he solved your problem. Maybe God finally gave you a direction to go on something. You've been trying to decide for a little while. Maybe he's provided a blessing and you realize that the source of that blessing is the Lord. So suddenly you realize that God has been so good to you and has blessed you and guided you so much. You simply can't contain it anymore. And that is where that shout of Joy comes from.

It makes me wonder how often even though we know these things. We know the blessings we have is coming from the Lord. We know that he's the one that's provided this. Do we really give credit where credit is due? Or do we simply go Upon Our Lives and no one knows that God has blessed us in this way. Do we share that with other people do we let them know? Maybe not allowed shelters. That might make people question your mental status at the time if you're just shouting out in the middle of the day, but sharing what God is doing in your life and letting others know. command number two Worship the Lord with gladness come before him with joyful songs, you know another passage of scripture says Make a Joyful Noise unto the Lord.

Mean if you'll notice in these first two commands, what is a Common Thread in there? God wants us to be happy. It says shout for Joy. It says worship with gladness. It says come with joyful songs. You know, we're here does it say that we are simply to come to church out of an obligation because we feel we have to be there. No, it says we're supposed to come with. Joyful Hearts to come and worship with gladness and to sing. Joyful songs. You know all too often we are so Solomon are worship that people who don't know what we're here for would probably get confused and wonder why we're Gathering to do what we do. To become and worship with gladness.

Cuz I thought about that passage to you know of Worship the Lord with gladness. I thought you know so often. I think we can get trapped into thinking that the only form of worship that there really is is singing. And we don't realize that there are so many other ways that we can Worship the Lord. You know one common thing I thought of and I know a lot of people wouldn't think of this as worship is but it's like when we have a church work day. And you come and you do some work at the church or we go to someone else's house in the community, and we do some work we've done things. You know, do you see that as a form of worship?

Now for Jeff, it's not cuz he always ends up with poison ivy.

But you know do we know that when we show up and we're working and we're doing those things and I often laugh because if you come and you participate in those days, we get a lot of work done, but we also have a lot of fun while we're doing it. And why do you think that is?

I think that is a direct result of seeing God fill you with joy. That's why you enjoy it so much and you know, that's why it is such a good time of Fellowship because it is him filling you with joy.

And you know so often in my job as a pastor, you know, it has its really good days, but it also has its really challenging days. Did you have those days when you know you get to celebrate wonderful things with people, you know, one of my favorite things to do is weddings or to do baptisms for people but there's also doing funerals for people. the very opposite side of all that but you know, it all fills me with joy. And it doesn't matter some weeks. How many hours you spend doing it or how many phone calls you've had to make her meetings? You've had to attend and it's all because I know that God is filling me with his Joy cuz sometimes I get through a week and I wonder how did I make it through that one? It's all because God enabled me to.

You know the song that says also in there come before him and serve him and sing his praise with joy in your heart.

And I want to challenge us all that the next time we want to have a church work day, and maybe it's going to be decorating the church for Christmas here. Come and just experience the joy that God will fill you with as you serve in the church or come to a night at Food Pantry. When were handing things out and just feel that feeling of God's filling you with his joy as you serve the church. Because we need to see that it's not just an opportunity to check something off the list and say we did this thing for church, but it is an opportunity. The fellowship with your church family and to allow God to fill you with his Joy. Command number three that we see in that passage is know. The Lord is God it is he who made us and we are his we are his people the Sheep of his pasture. You never ceases to amaze me to think about the idea that you know, God took every bone every joint every muscle in our bodies and he put them all together exactly the way that he wanted them.

You know, he gave us the color of hair that we're going to have the color of eyes that we are going to have he knew how tall we would be your house short and some of our cases. God knew everything about us and he assembled everyone of us exactly how he wanted us to be. And sometimes that's a mystery, isn't it? Especially as you grow older and things begin to not work as well as they used to work on our bodies. We can begin to wonder. Why did God make us this way?

You know what? I think about my own life, I think about you know, why did God decide and all of his Divine wisdom and Providence? Take a guy who's a little on the short side a little on the thick side and definitely not to smarter good at anything. And make him a pastor. I think it's because he knew that as a faithful father and husband, I'd keep plodding along no matter what. And some days that's how I feel, but I know that he made me defects and all exactly how he wanted me to be. I think that's something we forget some days when we're going through challenges and we think fall if I could just do this or I could just do that or if I didn't have to deal with this health problem or that health problem. Everything will be better. We need to remember we are exactly how God wants us to be. And the truth, is he still making everyone of us? Now some of us he hasn't been working on for that long, but there's others of us that he's been working on for quite a while now, but we are all still in process with God God is never satisfied with his unfinished product and we have to realize none of us will be completely finished until we are with him again. He's working on it square a work-in-progress. So You know God isn't satisfied with those character flaws that we have. He's going to keep giving us opportunities to work on those God isn't satisfied with those areas where we struggle with temptation in life. He's going to keep giving us opportunities to conquer that. That's going to keep working on its everyday. So you need to remember God is your maker. He created you in His image and he is working to make you more christ-like each and every day. We just have to remember that and to keep working and give him thanks for who you are blemishes and all.

You know, the song was also says in that that we are his people the Sheep of his pasture. That's the challenging part of that one because most of us want to be Shepherds not sheep, right?

The sheet for the ones being led around we want to be the one doing the leading cuz we don't think it's any fun to be sheep. Problem is we don't know where the Still Waters are. We don't know where the Green Pastures are the God does because he's the shepherd and he's promised to lead us there if Bill letting Does God leads us through the twisting winding course of our life? We need to let God lead. And let God be God. And fill our role as the Sheep. You know, that's what it means to know that the Lord is God. To understand we are the Sheep. He's the shepherd command number for that. We find In this passage. It says enter his gates with Thanksgiving and his courts with praise give thanks to him and praise His name.

you know the Old Testament the temple was meant to symbolize the presence of God. So whenever the people came to the temple and entered the courtyards they knew that they had come into the presence of God.

You know now we enter into a place we call the sanctuary and as we enter into this place, I sure hope we feel the presence of God and we know that the presence of God is there.

But we need to know that God is everywhere. We need to know that God is with us when we're driving down the road. We need to know that God is with us when we're at work. We need to know that he is with us when we take care of our children. We need to know that he is with us when no one else is around. We need to know that God is always with us. He is with us every moment of our life.

That's important for us to remember.

Did you know if God is the source of our Thanksgiving?

Then we should be thankful that he's always walking with us.

But you know, I thought about some things as I started to think about that and think about our personal relationships with God.

I thought about what if God began to treat us like we so often treat him. in the relationship You know what? If God met our needs to the same extent that we are willing to give him our lot.

What if we never saw another flower bloom because we complained about the rain that we got yesterday? What if God stopped loving and caring for us because we failed to love and care for others.

What if God took away his message because we chose not to listen to the messenger that he sent us.

What if God wouldn't bless us today? Because we didn't think to thank him yesterday for the blessings he gave us. You know what? If God answered our prayers the same way that we answer his call to serve the church.

What is God's decided to stop leading us tomorrow? Because we didn't follow him today.

You know, what if all those things happened? And that brings us to the last part of this song, which is one promise. You can always trust him. Does for the Lord is good and his love endures forever his faithfulness continues through all generations.

You know, so we don't have to worry about all those things. I just talked about. Because God is faithful and we should be praising God and shouting for Joy. Like it said because it is not within God's character to treat us that way that I just talked about so often that's how we treat each other in human relationships, but praise God he doesn't act that way. He can't act that way. and I pray that as we go through this season of Thanksgiving as we begin to think about things we are thankful for

what are the number one things we will be thankful for is that God is who he is that God has the character that he does that God has the character that we read about in Scripture. And it's simply because of who God is in our relationship with him that we should be thankful each and every day and that our hearts should be overflowing with thankfulness. Please bear with me in prayer.

Heavenly Father we come to you and Lord we are so thankful that

you don't often treat us like our actions deserve.

Lord that you respond so often to us out of mercy and Grace Lord that we so often don't deserve But Lord, I pray that we will make it our goal each and every day to allow our hearts and our minds to be filled with your goodness be filled with your joy. So that Lord we can continue to Proclaim. Our thankfulness in our Joy to the World around us. And Lord that we will be quick to give credit where credit is due. And to let everyone know that the joy that we have with anise comes from you. I pray this all in your most. Holy name. Amen.

You know, I've probably share this scripture more this week than I have ever shared it in my life. With people who are stressed out or worried about the election. Maskme how I wasn't? And I said well Romans 13:1. And I said, you know, I also remember a passage in scripture. I was going to look this morning which one it was, but I didn't. Where the disciples talked about some of the teaching that Jesus gave and said Lord, that's just too hard. That's a hard pill to swallow. We don't want to. But depending on who you voted for how you feel about the election. This one can be a tough one to swallow. To realize that there is no leader in any Nation anywhere on this planet. It wasn't put there by. And what puzzles us with that is how can that be? How can God use people that we don't know that we don't like that. We don't think believe the same thing. We believe to be a part of this plan. Well, I don't know. But he does and he is and this is all still a part of God's plan. He's not surprised by the election or how it turned out or how it all went. When he created the Earth and laid the foundation of the earth, he already knew who was winning this election.

And what we have to remember is what we saying in that song of great is thy faithfulness. And know that in the midst of whatever's going on God is still faithful God is still in control. He's still the shepherd. We're still the sheet and we need to remember that knows other people and continue to be stressed about what might be going on. We need to share this scripture with them and remind them the truth of God's word that all authority is put in place by him. So we may not understand it but we trust in God's faithfulness. So go and have a blessed week and share that joy in that help with others. Amen.

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